The universally loved story of "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up," also featuring Wendy and Captain Hook, didn't spring effortlessly from the mind of the Scottish playwright and novelist J.M Barrie. It has its own challenging and distinctive birth story. That story is on full display in the musical "Finding Neverland," which is being given a lively world premiere by American Repertory Theater.

Directed at the ART by artistic director Diane Paulus, the book for 'Finding Neverland' was written by James Graham and the music and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy. The show is based on the film "Finding Neverland" by David Magee, featuring Johnny Depp, and the play "The Man Who Was Peter Pan" by Allan Knee.

At the heart of the musical is the friendship Barrie develops with the widow, Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, and her four boys, whom he meets one day in 1904 in London's Kensington Gardens and with whom he instantly bonds. His marriage to Mary Barry, a fashionable woman caught up in decorating, is not particularly satisfying to him or her.

In the middle of all this, Barrie is under pressure from his American producer, Charles Frohman, to write a new, successful play after his last one closed within a day. Barrie has no idea where to turn next.

After a delightful scene in which Barrie meets Sylvia and her children in Kensington Gardens, and they bring forth his childlike spirit, which is always bubbling away just under the surface, she and her boys come to his house for a formal dinner. Disaster is in the making. Under the choreography of Mia Michaels, the servants wait on the guests with highly stylized, contemporary dance moves, underscoring the formal adult world that Barrie has little interest in. Soon everyone freezes except Barrie and the children as they play wild games between them with the children jumping up onto the dinner table. By the end, Barrie's family dog gives Mary a big, unwelcome lick right across her face.

At the heart of this musical is Laura Michelle Kelly's performance as Sylvia. She overflows with life, spontaneity, and a love that makes her irresistible to us, her children, and to Barrie, too. She soon sings an exquisite lullaby to her children with a gorgeous, all-out voice. Before long Jeremy Jordan as J.M. Barrie sings, also beautifully, to her of Neverland, a place where you don't get old, that's only a light year and a day away. Jordan brings an intense passion for life, an appropriate quirkiness, and a believable Scottish accent to Barrie.

Frohman, the Producer, has problems with the idea that Barrie has been developing for a play. "How did a clock get inside the crocodile?" he asks. "A play for children? They don't have any money." Played with aplomb by Michael McGrath, Frohman has a funny aversion to everything that has to do with children.

Page 2 of 2 - Barrie has a difficult time bringing the components of "Peter Pan" together until he meets Captain Hook in a swashbuckling scene on a large sailing ship. "I'm the fire in your belly, your darker side," McGrath, doubling as Hook, says to Barrie. Before the lively scene is over, Barrie finally sets aside his timid, not-so-sure self and swings a pirate's sword with gusto.

When the second act opens, Barrie is fully in command of the actors who are to perform "Peter Pan" and have no clue what to do. The actor playing Mr. Hedgeshaw is precious and all hands, surprised to find that he'll be playing the Nanny, i.e., the family dog. There's a particularly funny scene in which Barrie gets a large actor to deliver a line smaller and smaller until it's actually real.

But it's at the tavern, The Swan, where Barrie and Sylvia finally convince the actors to break through their inhibitions, cut loose, and embrace the play, as they dance on the tables to a lively dance hall number.

Sylvia's boys are warm, fun, and appealing-Alex Dreier as Michael, Hayden Signoretti as Jack, Sawyer Nunes as George, and Aidan Gemme as Peter, who struggles over the death of his father and has a hard time being a fun-loving kid again. They're all delightful as they stage a charming children's play written by Peter before learning more hard news that turns their world upside down.

Before the musical is over, there's a lively, ambitious scene from "Peter Pan" performed in the Davies' home with Peter flying, thanks to actors' hands, not cables and rigging.

This show is packed with large, polished production numbers, in what feels like an effort to make sure it succeeds this time, given that its original version didn't survive. And one wonders if it wouldn't benefit at times from a little more variety in scale. But before it opened at the ART, news was out that it will be heading to Broadway with a March opening.